AWESOME. The game is simple, yet elegant. The rules are a watered down version of FFG Star Wars...the best parts. Instead of using specialized dice, you use regular 6 sided dice. There's some good iOS apps to simulate rolls, including Genius Dice, which lets you set the different dice and colors.

I see this game as a great gateway RPG. It's easy to get friends to join, because they just play themselves. The lands and locations aren't hard; it's just outside your door, and the dice mechanic is so easy that most people understand it after showing them an example. Also, zombies are such a fad, most people will be intrigued by the premise.

The End of the World: Zombie Apocalypse is the first of four apocalyptic role-playing games from table-top veteran company Fantasy Flight Games. The first installment, Zombie Apocalypse, shows a very unique take on not just the standard zombie trope, but the table-top RPG in general.

The book is broken up into three major sections: Playing the Game, Running the Game and Scenarios.

Playing the Game introduces the player to the rule-set, covering everything from character creation to conflict and death. Character creation is sleek and streamlined, allowing even first-time role-players to jump into the game quickly. C=Players are strongly encouraged to portray themselves in order to make the action more visceral, but players can certainly make any type of character that they want.

The game system, which runs on d6's, enables fast, gritty combat and harrowing choices. The characters feel much more vulnerable, which combined with the system creates a very tense setting overall. Hit points, the standard measure of nearness to death, is instead replaced by Stress and Traumas. Take too much stress and your character dies, or maybe goes insane. Traumas have in-game penalties to actions, but alleviate Stress. It's an amazing system which has players constantly questioning whether they should convert Stress to Trauma, or ride the fine line between life and death without the penalties associated with Traumas.

Running the Game is a much shorter section, informing the GM how to handle encounters and balance them with narrative, how to handle the menagerie of complex NPC's the characters are sure to encounter during their struggle to survive the gnashing teeth of the undead and how to determine how long a campaign should go.

Scenarios, the last section of the book, is the meatiest. It features five completely different origins for the zombie apocalypse, complete with timelines to demonstrate how a plague-borne zombie virus pans out vice zombies created from the radiation emitted from a fallen meteor.

Each scenario lays out the basic premise, then goes on to explain the truth of the event versus what a character might think is happening. This is followed by a very detailed timeline, starting from the initial outbreak to months or even years in the future.

This is just part of the magic, however. In addition to how events play out during and immediately after the outbreak, each scenario also details how it can be played post-apocalypse.

Each scenario gives a wide range of pre- and post-apocalypse NPC's that the characters are likely to encounter. In addition, there are a large selection of events that the characters could be expected to face, from traffic jams to military evacuations.

All in all, while no game is perfect, this one is pretty close to the mark. With sleek artwork adorning silky smooth pages, there is enough information within the tome of undead to fuel a player's nightmares from now until the End of the World!

This is an AWESOME and well thought out End of the World book... the range of set ups, initial events, and then even post-apocalypse scenarios for all 5 situations are just really well written, thought out, and portrayed. I will admit I have not played through these with their RPG system.. so I cannot 100% say that it works on all levels as a gaming system, but just as an awesome and interesting read, a resource for any zombie game out there, and as a thought experiment for how different zombie apocalypses could play out in the modern world; this book is totally worth it and I'm psyched I picked it up.

I can only hope that more End of the World books are this good as I will definitely be buying whatever comes next... my only concern, which was expected based on the wide range that this book covers, is that the GM will have to flesh out the scenarios for their specific party... there is just no way you could expect a book like this to give you 5 full introductory adventures... and I'm fine with that, as the personalization of each group's Zombie Apocalypse should be based on the group and their location and not just a generic adventure... but again, even if I never run this system (which I am going to test out though!), I'll be happy with this purchase.